Motorcycle helmets opposed, despite deaths

WASHINGTON –Deaths on the nation's roads and highways have fallen sharply in recent years, to the lowest total in more than a half-century. But the news for motorcyclists has been increasingly grim.

So it might be no surprise that biker groups are upset with Washington. The twist is what they are asking lawmakers and regulators to do: Back away from promoting or enforcing requirements for safe helmets, the most effective way to save bikers' lives.

Fatalities from motorcycle crashes have more than doubled since the mid-1990s. The latest figures show these accidents taking about 4,500 lives a year, or one in seven U.S. traffic deaths.

Yet if the biker groups' lobbyists and congressional allies have their way, the nation's chief traffic cop, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, will be thwarted in its efforts to reduce the body count. The agency would be blocked from providing any more grants to states to conduct highway stops of motorcyclists to check for safety violations such as wearing helmets that don't meet federal standards.

Beyond that, the rider groups are seeking to preserve what essentially is a gag rule that since 1998 has prevented the agency from advocating safety measures at the state and local levels, including promoting helmet laws. And the bikers' lobbyists, backed by grass-roots activists and an organization whose members include a "who's who" of motorcycle manufacturers, already have derailed a measure lawmakers envisioned to reinstate financial penalties for states lacking helmet laws.

Those moves partly are intended to maintain the bikers' clout in state legislatures, which have been rolling back motorcycle helmet regulations for three decades. Only 19 states (including Oregon) have helmet laws covering all riders, according to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety. In the late 1970s, by contrast, 47 states had such requirements.

"This is ... an interesting and dangerous road they are going down," said Jackie Gillan, president of the Washington-based nonprofit Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety. "They are so emboldened now, not only do they try to repeal laws and stop them from being enacted, they try to stop the hands of law enforcement, saying you cannot use grant money to have motorcycle checkpoints. Can you imagine if they said the same thing about sobriety checkpoints?"

More training urged

Biker groups, contending that helmet laws curtail personal freedom, say the federal government instead should emphasize rider training to prevent crashes from occurring in the first place.

But it is far from clear that training does anything to reduce crashes or deaths. A 2007 Indiana study, for instance, found that riders who completed a basic training course were 44 percent more likely to be involved in an accident than untrained riders. Researchers speculated that the courses gave riders unwarranted confidence, and that they ended up taking more risks.

Mandatory helmet laws are widely considered the closest thing to a silver bullet that regulators have to thwart deadly accidents. The traffic safety administration estimates that helmets saved 1,483 lives in 2009, and that another 732 deaths could have been avoided if all riders had worn them. The social costs of the carnage are also huge: a 2008 agency estimate concluded that $1.3 billion in medical bills and lost productivity would have been saved if all bikers had worn helmets.

(In Oregon, the average fatality rate dropped from about 69 a year to about 29 a year after helmets were required in 1988.)

That motorcyclists have evaded the kind of regulation that has made seat belts and car seats standard equipment in other motor vehicles shows the influence of a vocal minority of riders whose libertarian message seems to resonate more than ever with lawmakers inside and outside the Beltway.

Powerful friends

And their efforts receive support from the leading motorcycle manufacturers. Manufacturers generally endorse the use of helmets but, loath to offend their customers, they also are an important dues-paying membership bloc in the American Motorcyclist Association, an ardent opponent of helmet laws.

The rider lobby's powerful friends include U.S. Rep. James Sensenbrenner, R-Wis., whose state is home to Milwaukee-based Harley-Davidson Inc. He has led efforts in the House to block the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration from promoting state and local safety measures and using federal funds for motorcycle checkpoints.

The American Motorcyclist Association, whose corporate members include Harley-Davidson and North American divisions of Yamaha, Kawasaki, Honda and Suzuki, has spent $3.8 million lobbying Congress on helmet laws and other issues over the past decade, while doling out more than $200,000 in campaign contributions to members, according to OpenSecrets.org, a database run by the nonprofit Center for Responsive Politics. The Motorcycle Riders Foundation spent $2.1 million in lobbying during the same period.

As more riders have gotten on the road and the number of states with mandatory helmet laws has declined, biker deaths have soared. The death toll climbed from 2,116 in 1997 to 4,502 in 2010, the most recent year for which figures are available.

Helmet advocates say the public ends up getting ripped off when it has to pick up the tab for health costs associated with catastrophic accidents.

"If you don't wear a helmet, and you sustain a moderate to severe injury that doesn't kill you, you are going to be a drain on society for the rest of your life," said Thomas Esposito, chief of the Division of Trauma, Surgical Critical Care and Burns at Loyola University Medical Center in Chicago.